Between March 8-12, 2005, the XXVIII Congress of the IULTCS will take place in Florence, Italy, organised this time by the Italian Leather Chemists’ Association (AICC).
The organising committee wanted to prepare a technical programme that is more digestible; comfortable at the same time as interesting. So there will be two types of contribution: oral communications and visual displays.
The oral communications have been reduced considerably, with the aim of not overloading the programme excessively. The visual displays, taking the place of the old posters, represent an approach that endeavours to give these scientific contributions equal status with the oral presentations. There will be a room adjacent to the auditorium in which twenty stands will be installed with divisions between each, where authors can ‘decorate’ the interior in whatever way they choose; for example, by putting up ‘posters’, incorporating slide presentations, videos etc (with the prior agreement of the organising committee).
Each day, different pieces of scientific work will be presented which can be visited throughout the course of the day. According to the technical programme, there will also be an official time to visit the presentations that doesn’t coincide with the oral presentations. In addition, at the end of each day, authors will have five minutes available in the auditorium to present a summary of their work, with an opportunity for discussion afterwards.
This development is designed to restore dignity to the older ‘posters’ and equalise the standing of these presentations alongside the oral communications. Often, scientific or technological work is somewhat dry and tedious to present orally. However, synthesised in the form of schemes in the ‘visual displays’ it may be more comprehensible.
The Heidemann Symposium has been omitted, and in its place during this and in future IULTCS congresses a new section known as ‘The Heidemann Lecture’, in memory of the late Prof Heidemann, will follow the opening ceremony. This lecture will consist of a special communication of particular interest given by an internationally recognized figure who will be chosen by the organising committee.
The technical programme covers all areas of manufacture in the leather industry, and the problems associated with them: improvement of conventional processes and their substitution by others that minimise contamination, better known as ‘clean technologies’; research in the area of biotechnology that aims to optimise the use of new enzymes, mainly employed in the beamhouse process: unhairing, liming, bating etc; optimisation of chrome (III) tanning and alternatives to this process; finishing without solvents; purification of effluents using biomembrane reactors; processing of collagenic wastes, etc.